What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America? Collectively, they have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to take a stand. PayPal, Square, Stripe and Apple Pay announced years ago that they would not allow their services to be used for the sale of firearms.

I've been using Samsung Pay on my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and I really like it. No real issues until just a couple of days ago when I tried to use it at a Publix store. It didn't work even though I held the phone right over the same spot of the card reader that I normally do. I tried it again and again it didn't work so I ended up pulling out my Debit card and used that. Okay, I figured that maybe there was something wrong with that particular card reader. However, this morning I went to a...

Purchased gas on my credit card today. Several minutes later, I received a text message from my credit card vendor asking me to confirm other purchases, none of which I had made. Contacted credit card company and they froze the account. They are expediting me a new card which I will receive Monday.I've had this happen in the past also and things are always resolved quickly and to my satisfaction. But I wonder how often this happens to other Freepers. Basically, I'd like to know how often this should be expected to happen to see if I need to do...

Aldi, the Germany-based no-frills supermarket chain, says it will now accept credit cards as it tries to attract more shoppers. Aldi had previously just accepted cash and debit cards. The move, announced Tuesday, should put more pressure on chains like Target, Wal-Mart and others. ...

It has become legend in Florida political circles Marco Rubio's financial story: two years of credit card transactions from his time in the state House, when he and other Republican leaders freely spent party money. Details about the spending, which included repairs for Rubio's family minivan, emerged in his 2010 U.S. Senate race. But voters got only half the story because the candidate refused to disclose additional records. Now Sen. Rubio's past is under fresh scrutiny as he emerges as a top presidential prospect. During last week's debate, he deflected questions about his financial discipline - most recently, he liquidated...

Banks have been sending out new chip-enabled credit cards, and stores have been installing new machines that require you to dip the new cards rather than swipe them. It's all aimed at keeping you safe from hackers. … new liability rules go into effect October 1 that shifts who pays for fraudulent charges. Banks used to cover any bogus transactions, but now the entity with less protection will have to cover the costs. For instance, if a chip-enabled card is used in a store that hasn't upgraded its payment system, the retailer is on the hook for any fake swipes.

Jonathan GarberSeptember 9, 2015CardHub, a financial website that monitors credit card debt, says credit card debt levels in the US are on pace to increase by another $60 billion by the end of 2015. According to CardHub, such an increase would bring total US credit card debt to just shy of $900 billion, which is the level that at which it becomes unsustainable. CardHub told Financial Advisor, "We erased almost all of our first-quarter pay down, racking up a whopping $32.1 billion in new balances from April through June, the largest second quarter binge since we began conducting the Credit...

The Trump Hotel Collection, a string of luxury hotel properties tied to business magnate and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, appears to be the latest victim of a credit card breach, according to data shared by several U.S.-based banks. Contacted regarding reports from sources at several banks who traced a pattern of fraudulent debit and credit card charges to accounts that had all been used at Trump hotels, the company declined multiple requests for comment. But sources in the financial industry say they have little doubt that Trump properties in several U.S. locations — including Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas,...

There are a lot of purchases you can make with the information on the front of a credit card. But ID thieves who have the card number, name, and expiration date will still hit a speedbump if they have to enter that (usually 3-digit) security code on the back of a victim’s card. Notice that we said “speedbump” and not “dead end,” because some scammers have figured out how to get this crucial info from their victims. According to our colleagues at Consumer Reports, the security code scam works by taking advantage of the near-constant news of data breaches that...

It would be comical, were it not such big business for bad people. [The vendor wasn't named by the researchers, David Byrne and Charles Henderson, but they did disclose the password: 166816. A Google search reveals that's the default password for several models of credit card terminal sold by Verifone, a Silicon Valley-based vendor that says it connects 27 million payment devices and has operations in 150 countries. The researchers said that the password remains in use on nine out of 10 terminals they see from the vendor, in part because customers mistakenly assume it is unique to them.] "Even...

In order to provide additional and enhanced credit card protection for consumers, credit card companies will soon implement new rules that will change the way credit and debit card transactions will be processed. All major credit card companies are issuing new EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) cards or “smart cards” that contain embedded microchips that provide transaction security features and other capabilities not possible with current, traditional, magnetic stripe cards. (Note: Smart cards are not new. They have been around a long time and most of the world has already migrated to EMV technology. The United States is one of...

If you have a recently issued credit or debit card, there is a very good chance it has an RFID chip in it that will transmit your card information to any nearby reader. Many of the newer model smartphones are RFID enabled and make it possible for someone standing next to you in line at the grocery store or at the train station to steal your identity and your money. Just wanted to raise awareness of this risk and create an opportunity to share ideas on how to mitigate this risk. I disabled the chip in my cards with a...

The Obama administration is pushing Americans away from credit cards and regular lines of credit in the financial market and pushing them toward loan sharks and other lines of credit, a panel of professors noted at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. credit cards Todd Zywicki, law professor at George Mason University and the author of a new book entitled, Consumer Credit and the American Economy, and Anthony Yezer, an economics professor at George Washington University, were on the panel. Zywicki said, “We’ve had…the most unbelievable assault of economic regulation in my life” under the current administration. Rules put into...

I can't be the only one who has been pre-approved for the Quick-Silver Card,then I get in in the mail,a week later I am Pre-Approved for another one.So I applied for the second one,I was approved!,then today,I got my approval for another Quick-Silver Card!,I guess Capital One has so many millions of customers that they just cannot maintain their records to the extent where they finally stop sending pre-approvals for the same cards we already received.

WASHINGTON — Jobs growth has been solid of late, and manufacturing sentiment has been strong. But the lack of wage growth has been apparent, and one manifestation of that has been the paltry rise in credit-card debt. The latest data on consumer credit is due out Thursday. It’s likely to show non-revolving debt like auto and student debt is continuing to grow rapidly. But credit-card debt has barely budged. “Incomes are only growing so much,” said Josh Shapiro, chief economist at MFR. “[Consumers] are not going to go two-fisted on credit-card and auto debt.”

Will FDIC Regulations Shut Down the Prepaid Card Industry? We have written about prepaid debit cards several times in recent months, but this week we saw the latest news that could throw a monkey wrench in the burgeoning prepaid card industry. As reported by PaymentsSource, Bancorp Inc., one of the biggest issuers of prepaid cards with $4.7 billion in assets, saw its shares drop 30 percent when the company agreed to curtail its prepaid card activity as part of a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). A 22-page consent order mandates that Bancorp institute a number of changes...

Two weeks before Christmas of 2004, Kandy Hildebrandt opened a letter addressed to her husband Russ, at his request. The letter revealed that her husband had a personal loan of $17,500. They sat down to talk about it: Russ also had 11 credit cards totaling $89,000 in debt. “He handled the personal finances,” she says. “I knew we had several credit cards, but I was unaware of the extent of our debt.” The finance charges on the credit cards alone were $1,593 a month – double their $750 monthly rent in New Richmond, Wis. The Hildebrandts knew they needed to...